received the páhul, while new candidates from among the Játs and lower caste Hindus joined the faith.
Since those days of enthusiasm a natural reaction has set in, and comparing the census of 1881 with that of 1868 there appears to be a falling off in almost all the central districts. This is in part due to inconsistency in the returns, and the confusion regarding the Nánaki Sikhs, who do not adopt the surname of Singh, with the followers of the tenth Guru Govind. But the chief reason is found in the strong attractive force of Hinduism, which, in days of peace, when martial instincts have less influence, retains its hold of the people. Its ivy-like vitality, enfolding and strangling everything which it has once grasped, has been fatal to almost all creeds which, like Sikhism and Buddhism, both heterodox forms of Hinduism, have put themselves in competition with it. As the Church of Rome in the West so is Hinduism in the East. When it has ebbed like the tide and its enemies have believed in a victory, it has returned on the flood in all its former strength. Hinduism has been ever hostile to Sikhism, for the latter faith attacked it in its most vital principle of caste, without which the whole Bráhmanical system falls to the ground. The influence of Hinduism on Sikhism is doubly felt, both in preventing the children of Sikh fathers from taking the páhul, and by indirectly withdrawing professed Sikhs from the faith. The performance of a few expiatory rites, the payment of a certain sum of money to the Brahmans, the
